Domestic Relations

An Aspiring Young Writer Comes Of Age During A Season In Service To Lillian Hellman

November 29, 1998|By Joanne Kaufman. Joanne Kaufman is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and New York magazine.

A LIKELY STORY: One Summer With Lillian Hellman

By Rosemary Mahoney

Doubleday, 273 pages, $23.95

The best--and the rarest--tell-all memoirs are as illuminating and revealing about the teller as they are about the target. Such is the case with this splendid account of an unformed high school girl's stormy months with an unfinished woman.

One of seven children (her late doctor father may or may not have been a suicide, her beloved mother suffers from polio and drink), Rosemary Mahoney is a 17-year-old scholarship student at St. Paul's, a prestigious New Hampshire boarding school, when she discovers the works of Lillian Hellman:

"I was dazzled by her depiction of boat trips across the ocean, train trips across Europe, terrifying flights across Siberia, Nazis and Fascists, Communists and Stalinists, Hemingway and Faulkner, epigrammatic conversations in which the wise and moral Lillian was always slamming some ruthless yet simple-minded dupe smartly into place with a withering retort. . . . When Hellman wrote about her smallest experiences, they had the feel of epic adventures with epiphanic endings. . . . When she was in a bad mood, she didn't mind saying so; to the contrary, Lillian Hellman glorified bad moods, gave them a glamorous edge, brought them to the level of art. This was a revelation and a boon to a girl who had an abundance of bad moods of her own."

Dreading a summer of waitressing at Howard Johnson's, Mahoney, at her mother's encouraging, writes to Hellman at her home on Martha's Vineyard, offering up her housekeeping services (meager) and her cooking skills (non-existent):

"(W)hen I applied for the job I was thinking only of how Lillian Hellman and I would become great friends. She would be so pleased by me, my interests, my personality, that she would forget about all those petty things I didn't know how--or didn't want--to do. I pictured us sitting at her table together . . . laughing sagely and discussing books and people and the world and life. She would ask to see something I had written . . . (and) would proclaim that my work . . . was terrific."

Taking orders at HoJo's would have been a season in Shangri-La compared to taking orders from Hellman, who comes across as a combination of Joan Crawford and Capt. Queeg with a bit of wicked, fairy-tale stepmother thrown in. Certain of the rectitude of her position whatever the subject and however trivial the matter, Hellman is, in her young employee's eyes, a taskmaster of pedantry, prejudice, pettishness and parsimony.

For the record, the author of "Pentimento," "The Children's Hour" and "The Little Foxes" seems to have been an equal opportunity annoyer; almost every clerk and tradesperson on the Vineyard, Rosemary learns, has a Hellman horror story. The pity is that on the few occasions when Hellman does show the author the interest she craves, does offer some advice worth heeding, Mahoney's pride--by then nicely hardened--won't let her care.

There's no question Mahoney is a victim here--she's lied to about the number of hours she's required to work, treated as a none-too-bright child and humiliated in front of guests like Carly Simon and James Taylor. But to a lesser degree, Hellman, enfeebled and almost blinded by glaucoma, is a victim as well. She gets caught in power struggles with Mahoney that are hardly of her making or choosing, and caught in the headlights of her young employee's great naive expectations.

It is Mahoney's (retroactive) understanding of this--intercut with intriguing glimpses of the dynamic between her and her mother--that helps give the book its richness.

"A Likely Story" is, of course, more than a vigorous argument for the wisdom of a hero-worshipper keeping at a comfortable remove fom the hero. It is a coming-of-age chronicle. What is surprising here is aspiring-writer Mahoney's ignorance about the people who visit Hellman's home that summer--she has heard only vaguely of William Styron and hasn't a clue about how Mike Nichols earns his living (though she does give the director points for his kindness, and his generosity in leaving a $20 tip). She's equally unschooled about the names she hears mentioned by the visitors--Alfred Kazin, Elia Kazan, Whittaker Chambers.

She's a kid, it's true, but one who's growing up fast. Witness her handling of an unscheduled visit from an adoring, aggressive Hellman fan. Witness her handling of Hellman, passed out drunk in her bed while a merry dinner party with Styron, Nichols and John Hersey continues downstairs:

"Anyone leaving by the formal second-floor entry that night would have to pass her door and see their famous hostess dumb and naked, snoring and muttering on her bed. I stood there staring, floating in a wave of scorn and pity. I could punish her, leave the door open, and let people catch the terrifying sight. Or I could close it and protect her. I argued with myself. She had been so hard and unwelcoming. . . . Everything here seemed bitter and sour to me. . . .

"The sounds of her guests below, the shrieks of laughter and hoots and murmuring babble, were jarring the contrast to her deathly quiet. . . . The eyebrows she had so carefully prepared stuck up in spikes and spears, thin and pale. Her hair was a glossy jumble on the pillow.

"I threw a sheet over her. I went to the end of the room and closed the curtains. I turned off her light, took the doorknob, and gently pulled her door shut."

It is a poignant moment in a book full of such moments. Would that Hellman were around to read it.